Creating a Facebook Page for your organization

Many people who are interested in creating a Facebook presence for their business, band, or other organization often make the mistake of setting up a new personal profile on Facebook, substituting the name of their organization into the First and Last name fields on the Facebook signup page. This can frequently result in frustration (especially when you’re trying to fill in the fields for the gender and birthdate of your organization), and there’s usually a decent chance of the profile being disabled by Facebook, because Facebook profiles are intended for personal use by individuals, not groups or companies.

To create a presence for your group, you need to use Facebook Pages, which are essentially profiles geared towards companies and other organizations or services. To create a Page, sign into your personal Facebook account and then go to facebook.com/pages and click the + Create Page button. (If you don’t have a personal Facebook account you can still create a page by going to facebook.com/pages, but you will have to register in order to administer your Page.)

Next, choose which kind of organization you’re creating the Page for, such as a band, a non-profit, your freelancing service, and so on. Based on the category you choose, you’ll be asked to enter additional information, such as the address of your business, or the name of the event you’re creating the Page for. Just follow the prompts to complete the required info. Once you’re done with the set up you’ll be taken to your page.

At that point you can start dressing up your Page like a regular Facebook profile by adding photos, posting status updates, and commenting or posting on other people’s Walls. One important note: if you want your comments to appear as being posted by your organization, and not from your personal Facebook account, go to the Account menu in the upper-right hand corner of the website, and choose Use Facebook as Page. If you have more than one Page, you’ll be able to select which identity you’d like to use when interacting with other pages and profiles. Return to the Accounts menu when you’re ready to switch back to your personal identity again.

Here are some other cool and useful things you can do with your Page. First click Edit Info under your Page’s name. From there you can do things like:

Add apps. Select Apps from the left hand column, and choose to add apps like Events, Photos, Video, and Discussion Boards, which make it easy to add multimedia and interactivity to your page.

Add Admins. More than one person can manage a Facebook Page. Just go to Manage Admins to give other Facebook users Admin privileges. Just be sure you trust the people you make admins, because they’ll have complete control over the Page.

Check your stats. Click Insights to see data and graphs detailing how many people have Liked your Page and how many users are actively using your Page each month.

And be sure to explore the other categories in the left sidebar to see what additional options are available for you to customize.

Once your Facebook Page is looking the way you like, be sure to promote it by linking to it on your personal account’s wall so that it will appear in your friends’ newsfeeds. Encourage friends and others to visit your page and to click the Like button and become Fans of your Page. Any updates or announcements you make on your Page will appear in the newsfeeds of all your Fans.